Five patients leave Hadassah coronavirus-free after clinical trial
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All patients had been hospitalised in serious or critical condition before being treated with Allocetra, the new treatment.
Five patients recently discharged from Hadassah-University Medical Centre in Jerusalem were healthy and coronavirus-free, after taking part in the first clinical trial of an innovative treatment developed by the hospital.
Allocetra, the drug used in the clinical trial, was developed along with the company Enlivex based on research conducted by Prof. Dror Mevorach, director of Hadassah’s Internal Medicine and Coronavirus departments. It had already been successfully tested on 10 sepsis patients.
“Allocetra is meant to treat a wide range of cases in which there is an overreaction of the immune system, which leads to an increase in the secretion of proteins by cells of the immune system called cytokines and causes a cytokine storm,” Mevorach said in a press release. “Its activity is carried out by treating cells taken from a healthy donor and engineering them in the laboratory in a way that, when they are injected into the patient’s body, will control the inflammation or storm of cytokines that is very harmful to patients.”
The clinical test was carried out with the permission of the Health Ministry’s Helsinki Committee by a team led by Prof. Vernon Van Heerden, director of Hadassah’s General Intensive Care Unit. “We are happy that the patients in severe and critical condition recovered after the Allocetra treatment,” Enlivex said in the press release. Hadassah-University Medical Center director-general Prof. Zeev Rotstein said: “Despite the war around and alongside intensive preparations to absorb the growing numbers of critically ill patients, Hadassah continues to innovate and lead the breakthroughs in the treatment of these corona patients… [We] are pleased that a drug developed in research within the walls of our hospital does indeed show therapeutic potential in these patients.”
Hadassah University Hospital experts, due to the COVID19 travel restrictions continue offering their expertise and scientific opinion to patients from Cyprus, remotely through teleconferencing.
